The Dragon Lord

by E. G. Foley

  Still in person form, Prue stood on her toes and looked around, considering her options.

  Well, she had no intention of leading her brothers out by the front door. She wasn’t a fool. If they went that way, they would immediately be taken into custody.

  But which of the other two exits offered a better chance of escape? Urgency thrummed in her veins, and she told herself to hurry.

  The hundred schoolchildren packed into the library basement were herded into three large clusters, which, in turn, formed into vague lines, filing slowly toward the exits.

  Theoretically, while the civilians walked out two by two, as instructed, it should be easy for the triplets in skunk form to scurry up the stairs, bypassing the line, as long as they hugged the wall and managed not to be spotted by any bossy adults.

  Prue did not really like her options. She was trying to make up her mind which exit would be the safer, when, suddenly, she noticed a curious thing.

  Mr. Calavast, the brownie librarian, was unlocking a small, narrow door on the back wall with a sign on it that said: Staff Only.

  The desperate brownie must’ve been in a hurry to check on the library upstairs, because, after unlocking it with his key, he flung the staff door open, sped through it, and failed to close it all the way behind him.

  Prue elbowed both brothers. “Transform!” she ordered them.

  At once, the triplets jerked their heads to the side and shrugged their shoulders briskly in a move they had long since perfected; in an instant, three young skunks appeared in their places, the skinny one still wearing his glasses, the husky one still carrying his knapsack.

  “Follow me,” Prue said to her brothers in skunk language (which would’ve sounded like naught but a series of squeaks and squirrelly chitters to any human listener). Then she took the lead, scurrying off to the shadowed edges of the basement wall.

  With her brothers right behind her, she galloped toward the Staff Only door. When she reached it, she nudged it open a tad wider with her cute little black nose, then slipped through it into the inky darkness of a cramped, cobwebby stairwell.

  Welton whisked in behind her, then came Charlie. Mr. Calavast was already out of view; brownies moved with incredible speed, which was why they were so efficient as workers of all kinds.

  Prue began hopping up the dark narrow steps, pausing to look back briefly. “Charlie!” she squeaked. “Get the door!”

  She didn’t want anyone following them. There must be no witnesses to what she intended to do.

  The chubby skunk obeyed, scampering back to pull the door shut behind them. Satisfied, Prue continued jumping up the steps, using her long, luxurious, striped tail for balance.

  The staff stairway turned one corner and then another, twisting its way up to the main floor.

  At the top, she had to nudge a second door open. Then she peeked out into the library, looking this way and that.

  What she saw shocked her.

  Prue was not the scholarly type, nor was she at all sentimental, especially when it came to the Order. But even she was taken aback by the haunting sight of the towering library shelves swathed in smoke.

  The only sound was Mr. Calavast’s fuzzy bare feet pattering up and down the aisles as he ran about, checking everything and muttering anxiously to himself.

  When she heard the brownie speed off toward the circulation desk, she eased out of the doorway to get a better look around, signaling to her brothers with a flick of her tail that they should stay back. She just wanted to get a better sense of what she was dealing with here.

  Creeping a few steps out into the library and sniffing for information, though the heavy smoke in the air burned her nose, she stood on her hind legs and peered through the bookshelves.

  It was difficult to see much. Skunks did not have the best eyesight to start with, and it was dark as midnight and smoky. Nevertheless, she soon ascertained that the smoke was not coming from inside the library.

  Nothing in here was on fire. Lifting her gaze, Prue saw she had been right: some of the stained-glass windows had been shattered during whatever magical fight had taken place here.

  The smoke was drifting in from outside, wafting through the giant holes in the building where the windows used to be.

  Those empty sockets were perhaps what shook her most. Much of that gleaming, colorful glass had been centuries old. She hoped Sir Peter could repair them with a spell or incantation…

  But a grim feeling sank in as Prue realized that not everything could be fixed with the wave of a wand.

  Like her family’s reputation.

  Not after this. The Badgertons were done for. Disgraced.

  Beyond the gaping hole of what had been the rose window at the front of the cathedral-like library, she beheld the orange glow of a huge bonfire illuminating the black night sky.

  Her nerve faltered as she realized it was coming from the direction of the great maze, where the Old Father Yew lived.

  Now even that was on fire?!

  She swallowed hard, terrified to think of how close the Dark Druids must’ve come to destroying the entire Order tonight—and it was all Uncle Boris’s fault?

  For a second, she thought she might throw up. But in the blink of an eye, her courage hardened again. All the more reason to forge ahead with what she planned to do.

  If she and her brothers had no choice but to fend for themselves in the world henceforward, she did not intend to leave this place empty-handed. The three of them would need all the help they could get to survive on their own.

  Across the echoing space of the library just then, Prue heard the front door open.

  Someone came in.

  “Yoo-hoo! Mr. Calavast? Are you here?” The pleasant female voice resounded across the echoing space. “I’ve come to check on you.”

  “Oh! Dame Oriel. Y-yes, here I am! How kind.” The brownie librarian hurried to greet his visitor.

  They began chatting, but Prue mostly tuned out their conversation, scanning the way up to the restricted section.

  “There, there, are you all right?” the Elder asked.

  “Well enough, I suppose. It’s all such a mess! Fortunately, it doesn’t seem as though anything was taken. There were some small fires around the edges, but thankfully, none of them reached the books.”

  “Thank heavens,” Oriel said. “I know Fionnula Coralbroom was trying to blast her way in here, but I understand Lady Bradford held her off.”

  “My goodness!” said Calavast. “Well, it’s over now. The library should be all right, I daresay—as long as it doesn’t rain before these holes are fixed. Oh, it will take an army of helpers to get this place cleaned up. There’s a layer of soot all over everything…”

  Soot.

  The mention of it gave Prue an idea. While the two adults commiserated, she crept back into the stairwell, where her brothers waited.

  “All right. Calavast is distracted at the moment,” she told them in skunk language. “I’m going to go get us a spell book. Here’s what I want you to do—”

  “What, you’re going to steal it?” Welton said, looking scandalized.

  “Consider it a permanent loan,” she replied, giving him a snide stare.

  Charlie frowned. “Uh, I don’t think you’re supposed to steal from the library, Prue.”

  “Leave the thinking to me, Charles. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “But sis.” Welton twitched his nose to push his spectacles back up higher onto his snout. “Don’t you need a wand to do magic?”

  “I bought one at the last Fairy Market, remember, genius? It’s in Charlie’s knapsack. Now, quit asking questions. We don’t have time for this! We have to get out of here. You heard what Miz Jillian said. The Elders are already looking for us. If you want to get arrested by the Guardians, be my guest, but I’m getting out of here. Are you with me or not?”

  Both boys hung their heads and mumbled that of course they were.

  “Good. Now, here’s the plan. I
’m going to go and find us a serious grimoire. We’re on our own now, and that babyish beginner book Mother gave me isn’t going to be much use.

  “Now, after I’ve gone, I want you to count to three hundred to give me some time, then sneak over to the edges of the library and find one of those fires that burned out. I want you both to roll around in the soot to camouflage your stripes. That’ll help us blend in when we get outside and make a run for it.

  “And watch out for all that broken glass. I don’t want you cutting up your paws for when we need to run, which will be soon.”

  She peeked out the door again. “It looks like the back wall of windows are intact, so that way should be safe. Meet me by the exit in the back corner. It’s farthest from the palace; it leads out onto the grounds. From there, we’ll head for the woods as fast as we can run. Got all that?”

  The two boy skunks nodded.

  “Good luck, Prue,” Charlie grunted.

  “Thanks. Both of you, be careful.” With that, Prue scurried out of the stairwell, heading to the right. Her heart pounded as she ran over to one of the small piles of ashes where a wand blast had landed. There, she rolled over like a dog doing a trick.

  Wriggling on her back for a few seconds, she did her best to get soot all over her bold white stripe; this should help her hide under the cover of darkness. Then she flipped up onto all fours again and scampered on.

  Next stop, the restricted shelves.

  Alone now, she moved silently along the back wall. She had never minded sneaking around. In fact, she was rather good at it. And she knew exactly where she was headed.

  The restricted section was where all the best grimoires were kept—the ones that only advanced magical students could borrow—like Jake’s weird friend, Nixie Valentine.

  Some of the spell books were so powerful that they weren’t even allowed to leave the library at all.

  I’ll bet one of those would be most helpful. Why not? She had a wand, and she wasn’t afraid to use it. I might not know very much about magic yet, but I’ll figure it out as I go. How hard can it be?

  Determined as ever, Prue made her way over to the spiraling metal staircase that led up to the restricted collection. There, she turned herself back into a girl, albeit a girl whose face and clothes were smudged with ashes like war paint. She ducked beneath the chain cordoning off the staircase—as if that was going to keep anyone out. Then she began tiptoeing up the spiral stairs without a sound.

  Calavast was fussing to and fro behind the circulation desk, and Dame Oriel was still fluttering around him, trying to be helpful.

  Prue lifted her gaze as she continued sneaking up the metal staircase. The moon shone in through one of the empty window sockets. From outside, she could hear someone crying; others were giving orders as they sought to organize the chaos left behind by the night’s invasion.

  When she reached the top, she stepped off onto the gallery overlooking the main library. At once, she stole into the nearest shadowed aisle and quickly started scanning the shelves by moonlight.

  Her heart pounded with excitement at the mad risk she was taking. Problem was, she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at here. She was no scholar; clever by nature, yes, but she’d never had much reason to apply herself before.

  Usually, if any bad grades arose or teachers weren’t nice to her, all she had to do was sniffle and cry a little, and Uncle Boris would say, “There, there,” pat her on the head, and make sure her problems went away. He was an Elder, after all.

  Or had been.

  All Prue could figure was that the Dark Druids must’ve promised him major benefits for going over to their side. He wasn’t stupid.

  That must be it, she thought. I’ll bet he’s probably going to be a really important person on their side now.

  She had no problem with that. Power was power. Still, it would probably be a while before they all found each other again, so she’d better find a grimoire with a wide range of useful spells to see them through…

  Prue kept looking, doing her best to hurry.

  Many of the spell books were tomes too thick to lug around in skunk form, even for Charlie. (She congratulated herself for making Charlie bring his knapsack of supplies. Now at least they’d have a way to carry the grimoire when she found the best one.)

  She rejected whole rows of them. A lot were in Latin, so she couldn’t even read them, and many were so old and fragile that their yellowed parchment pages looked like they’d fall apart at first use.

  Here’s something. She pulled a slim leather-bound volume with gilt letters off the shelf. This one’s in good shape. The gold letters seem to twinkle in the moonlight as she read the cover:

  ARVATH’S ARCANIUM

  A Classic for the Ages

  Newly Updated for Our Day

  with a Preface by Dr. Belinda Glooms,

  Headmistress of Brambles Academy of Magick

  There was even a quote on the cover from Balinor himself: “This essential resource belongs on the bookshelf of any working mage.”

  It sounded promising. Prue quickly flipped through the pages and found a wide range of spells waiting inside. In the dark, she could just make out some of the chapter headers: Conjuration, Summoning, Illusions, Hexes…

  Perfect. Hugging the mysterious volume against her chest, Prue left the restricted section, crept back down the spiral staircase, and hurried toward the corner exit farthest from the circulation desk, where she’d told her brothers to meet her.

  They’d better be there, she thought, keeping her footsteps as light as possible. She didn’t see them as she strode over, then suddenly—

  “Watch it!” Welton whispered.

  “Oh. Sorry,” Prue muttered.

  The boys had done such a good job of hiding their stripes that she had nearly stepped on Welton’s tail.

  “Did you find a good spell book?” he whispered.

  She nodded, bending down to open the flap of Charlie’s knapsack. She slid Arvath’s Arcanium in with her wand beside the ridiculously babyish Little Owl’s Beginning Book of Magic, as well as the money she’d had the sense to bring along—and what little remained of their snacks.

  Prue rolled her eyes to find that Charlie had already eaten nearly everything. His gluttony erased any twinge of guilt she might’ve felt about making him carry the book. There was a reason that their husky middle brother usually took the most blame for their escapades.

  No one believed weakling Welton could hurt a fly, and Prue was too good at playing innocent. Therefore, if they did get caught with the stolen grimoire, it might as well be Charlie who got the blame, as usual. He was the one who’d be carrying it in his pack.

  She secured the buckle and looked at him. “Are you going to be able to run carrying that much weight?”

  “No problem,” he said with a proud squeak.

  “Good. I’ll get the door.” Still in human form, Prue pulled the heavy door open as silently as possible, and her brothers slipped out one by one.

  She stepped outside after them with a shiver, then pulled it shut behind her with a soft click. To her relief, no one was nearby on this side of the building. The students and civilians were all flowing out of the three larger exits of the library into the quadrangle.

  Still standing at the top of the few stone stairs that led down onto the grass, Prue changed back into her animal form.

  Then the skunkies set off into the night. They ran as fast as they could before anyone saw them, making a beeline for the woodlands surrounding Merlin Hall.

  Her heart pounded; Prue found their escape both terrifying and thrilling. All they had to do was make it into the forest, and then, even if they were seen, they would most likely be mistaken for ordinary skunks.

  Well, except for the knapsack.

  It didn’t matter in the end.

  They slipped away without a trace.

  Maybe this all was for the best, she reflected. Everyone hated them here. Glancing back resentfully at Merlin Hall on
e last time, she didn’t care if she never saw this place again.

  Then she led her brothers—still in skunk form—into the dark, familiar safety of the autumn woods.

  Welton giggled nervously, twitching his tail. “We did it!”

  “Where are we going?” Charlie whispered as they rustled along through the fallen leaves.

  “Who cares!” Prue shot back. “Anywhere but here. Now, both of you, shut up and follow me…”

  CHAPTER 17

  The Black Prince

  “Grandfather! I’m so glad you’re safe.” Victor gazed in relief at Zolond’s smoke-sculpted face atop the calling candle.

  “It was a dashed close thing,” the Dark Master admitted. “And, by the way”—he arched a brow—“don’t think I am unaware of your interference tonight.”

  “Who, me, sir?” Victor flashed an innocent smile.

  Zolond snorted, but gave way to a disapproving chuckle.

  “I hope it was helpful, sir.”

  “It was. And most unexpected.” The old man studied Victor for a moment, as though seeing him in a whole new light. “You lent me your strength right when I needed it most. ’Twas good of you.”

  “Glad to be of service, sir. I had to do something.” Victor faltered, perilously close to admitting that he cared.

  Such sentimentality would not be welcome, he knew. Two dark souls like himself and his grandfather ought not to form attachments with other people at all—or, at least, should never admit to it.

  Victor cleared his throat. “So, er, will you be calling your dragons back, now that you’ve contained the situation?”

  Zolond shook his head. “Not yet. To be quite honest, I would not say the danger is entirely passed. I have everything under control now, of course, but…keep your guard up over the next few days. I will be leaving Bhisk and Etah with you until we can be sure how all of this will settle out.”

  Concerned, Victor nodded. “I see.”

  Grandfather saw his uneasiness and smiled. “Don’t worry, lad. As I told you, things have calmed down. You should go to bed. It’s, what, two or three in the morning? I could use a bit of rest myself. I’m old, if you haven’t noticed. And I have…an important meeting in the morning with”—he lifted his chin—“a representative from the Order.”